Healthcare Geek.Professional Communicator.

Vocational Irony

I’ve been writing so heavily for clients that I’m catching up on posting links here to my recent work.

It’s something I try to do periodically: post a quick intro with a link to an article elsewhere that I’ve written or assisted with. It’s good for my SEO, it helps me keep all my work in one place, and it’s particularly helpful since my own byline doesn’t usually appear on the “assisted” work – which can range from entirely ghostwriting a piece, to polishing up an oral interview. Some of my work is used privately, so it doesn’t all get published – but still, this is a good way to keep my stuff gathered.

I knew it had been a while. I knew there would be a few to catch up on. But I’ve just listed and counted. And there are thirty. Oy.

So, of course… I’m delaying it a little longer. Because it’s long and overwhelming. And because I wanted to know if there was a term for this “shoemaker’s children” phenomenon – when you’re so busy doing the thing all the time that you don’t do the thing for yourself. And, happily, there is: vocational irony.

The more I’ve been turning that over in my head, the more I like it. Mainly because, like all forms of irony, it deals in opposites, if you think about it. We like to believe this sort of thing is an admirable type of self-abnegation. We’re so very dedicated to others that we don’t use our own expertise for ourselves. Except that isn’t really true at all, is it?

If we did use our expertise to benefit ourselves, it would make us that much better at the skill, and that much more credible.